Ken Braun: A suggestion on how the IRS can divert the spotlight

Hilary Shelton, director of the Washington, D.C., office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, responds to a question while participating in a panel discussion on affirmative action, Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2006, on the campus of Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Mich.Grand Rapids Press FIle Photo

The most dangerous place to stand these days is between a cable news camera and a congresscritter yammering at the IRS. You know a government agency is in jeopardy when its Capitol Hill critics are from both Republican and Democratic camps.

It’s not as if tax collectors had a reservoir of public support to begin with. They are so reviled that Jesus had to remind us to love them.

So the bureaucratic butt-covering goes like this: The IRS needs to find a way to talk to America about somebody more guilty than they are. They need to haul a high-profile target before the bright lights of public scrutiny and make an example of it.

There are two options.

First, there’s that line between public policy education and outright politics that caused this scandal to begin with.

Maybe there is an example of a right-of-center non-profit that truly and clearly DID cross that line between policy education and pure politics. McCarthyism would have succeeded if Tailgunner Joe had been digging up real commie spies under every desk in D.C.

But the IRS could also find a non-profit breaking other laws: Laws that Americans will worry over more seriously than some blurry line between policy and politics. Catch a REAL crook, in other words.

Prosecutions of this sort are likely ongoing, and have nothing to do with politics.

For example, a year ago January, the New York Times reported that the IRS and the California Attorney General were both investigating the non-profit American Civil Rights Institute and its head, Ward Connerly. Connerly has been involved in many successful efforts to eliminate race-based preference programs (a.k.a. “affirmative action”) across the country, including the 2006 victory for the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative.

The Times revealed a five page letter from an attorney for Jennifer Gratz, Connerly’s long-time lieutenant, informing the ACRI board that she had resigned and was advising them of numerous legal and ethical improprieties she had recently witnessed Connerly committing. According to the newspaper, she alleges that Connerly has “mismanaged — and exploited for his own benefit” ACRI donations.

A brief disclosure: Gratz is a personal friend from the days when she headed the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative.

According to her letter, Connerly initially tried to convince her that the investigations were due to false allegations of political misbehavior by ACRI, similar to the biased assumptions we now see in the Tea Party matter. But Gratz says ACRI’s own lawyers later revealed that Connerly’s “excessive” salary and other alleged PERSONAL financial misdeeds were the ONLY concern of the government, NOT ACRI’s educational mission.

The letter notes IRS statements, filed well after they were due, showing Connerly’s million-dollar-plus salary exceeded half the revenues of the financially-imperiled operation. Additionally, she reports that her final few months on the job included repeated staff payment irregularities, very questionable contracts regarding a woman Connerly was having a personal relationship with, and more. All interesting to the IRS, if true.

Connerly denies all, according to the NY Times, and calls Gratz a disgruntled employee seeking to take over from him.

There have been no public statements from the IRS, Connerly nor Gratz about the matter since January 2012. The investigation could be ongoing.

The future of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, Connerly’s best known success, will be decided before the U.S. Supreme Court this October. Good timing for the IRS, if they have something real to hit Connerly with. And though the High Court theoretically shouldn’t care either way, such news might spell trouble for the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative.
Ken Braun was a legislative aide for a Republican lawmaker in the Michigan House for six years and is currently the director of policy for a political consulting firm. His employer is not responsible for what he says here ... or in Spartan Stadium on game days.